The Dynamic Content System (DCS) is a very easy and flexible tool to display dynamic content in your Tiki sites/applications. This tool is very easy to use but somehow it's difficult to explain exactly what it is.

The DCS lets you administer blocks and program content for those blocks. Eventually, you will be able to display any block in any Tiki template or user module.

To get started, enable DCS from the main admin screen. You will now see a link to "admin content" at the end of the admin menu. Clicking on that link will take us to the DCS edit screen:

Creating and editing blocks

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In this screen you can see a list of dynamic blocks, to create a block you just need to provide a description, for example create the quote of the moment block:

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Once created you will see the block in the listing:

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From the listing you can remove the block (all content if present will be removed as well), you can edit the block description (Edit desc) or you can program some content for the block. Let's click on program to add some content:

Creating and editing content for a block

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In this screen you will see a listing of all the programmed content for the block and you will be able to edit a content, create a new one remove content etc. Enter some quote using the default date (will be the current date)

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So you have some content for the block 2 . It s very important to note the block number that you are editing at the top of the page.

Displaying DCS blocks

You can display dynamic content blocks in any Tiki template or user block using the following syntax:

{content id=1}

Note: the ids may be different in your installation

Where the id is the id of the block (not the id of the block content!!).

Now let's see how we can use the content in a user block.

Edit a user module as follows:

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And assign it to the right sidebar.

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You wil now see the user module displaying the content you just entered in the DCS!

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Programming content

Now let s program some content for the future, go again to the Admin content screen, Click program for the block with the id=2 (or the id you receive when testing). Click on program and enter some data changing the date for 5 minutes ahead of the current time.

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The listing will show in a dark shadow the current content active for the block and in a lighter color the rows for future content or old content. As you can see we have a block displaying The new quote that will be displayed at 13:41. Now just wait until that time and refresh the screen, the user block on the right side bar will change!

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This is how the DCS works, remember that you can display a dynamic block in any Tiki template not just user modules so you can design your site or design new pages for your Tiki-powered site including editable/dynamic/programmable blocks wherever you want.

You can use the DCS for whatever you want, you may want to display news, announcements, special notifications for special dates, sports results, messages to your site users, special offers, promotions, adds, etc.

The DCS system offers a lot of flexibility to your Tiki powered site, use it as you want and enjoy the results.